Vibration control in wind turbines to achieve desired system-level performance under single and multiple hazard loadings

Abstract

The increased demand in energy and the need for sustainable and renewable sources of electricity in hazardous environments with significantly growing population yields the installation of more wind turbines in these areas. In addition, the technological development in material and construction methods has led to the building of taller and more flexible turbines, with inherent low structural damping. Installing modern wind turbines in offshore harsh environments or seismic prone areas can cause an increment in the probability of failure due to excessive vibrations. The current study evaluates the performance of onshore and offshore wind turbines under multihazard loads, including wind, wave, earthquake, and mass and aerodynamic imbalances for both parked and operating conditions. The Lagrangian approach is employed to model the wind turbine considering the blade/tower coupling. In order to lessen the vibrations induced by multihazard loads, external smart dampers are used and a novel energy-based probabilistic approach is employed to tune the semiactive controllers. The results show the effectiveness of employing an analytical approach for the design of semiactive controllers in vibration mitigation of a wind turbine subjected to multiple hazards.